


TEMPEST

by iceman



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:50:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5784307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iceman/pseuds/iceman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It rained on Arkanis, torrential downpours that raged from days on end. Hux remembered being afraid of the storms, lying on his cot late at night long after mother had kissed him goodnight, he would hide under the covers, holding back tears as lightning crackled from the sky. Father had told him that crying was a weakness, that it wasn’t right for the son of Commandant Brendol Hux of the Galactic Empire to be tainted with such a fault, and he had wanted so very much to be strong, to be the son that his father desired, but the storm – his breath hitches as the thunder roared, and he told himself that a hurricane never runs from the rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. HUX

It rained on Arkanis, torrential downpours that raged from days on end. Hux remembered being afraid of the storms, lying on his cot late at night long after mother had kissed him goodnight, he would hide under the covers, holding back tears as lightning crackled from the sky. Father had told him that crying was a weakness, that it wasn’t right for the son of Commandant Brendol Hux of the Galactic Empire to be tainted with such a fault, and he had wanted so very much to be strong, to be the son that his father desired, but the _storm_ – his breath hitches as the thunder roared, and he told himself that a hurricane never runs from the rain.

They argued the morning after like they argued every other day – like the storm the night before, loud and angry and so awfully terrifying – Hux awoke, startled, as he heard mother yelling at the top of her voice about how _the Empire is always first in your mind, not your child, not your family,_ and even then, he had understood what she had meant.

When mother left, it on a freezing night when the winds had settled, raindrops splattering on cold hard ground like the tears in mother’s eyes. He had watched, from the safety of his bedroom door – dull, like everything else in the apartment, all white and black and made of _glass_ – mother screaming as she wailed on father’s chest with clenched fists, the look in her eyes terribly desperate with a need to understand, but father had stood stock still, unmoving, unfeeling, and behind the fragile shield of his bedroom door, Hux felt his entire world shatter.

That was the last time he would see his own mother, and the last time he slept curled up in his bed, blanket over his head as the rain wreaked its wrath on the soil of Arkanis.

‘You are my son, my blood, my _family_ , do you understand that?’ Father had asked him on the hangar bay, hands on either side of his thin shoulders, kneeling down to his height. The place was packed with people, all in uniforms, pressed and pristine and an exact copy of father’s, walking in that meaningful stride that was in between a brisk pace and a run.

Hux nodded like he always did to father’s questions and replied a dutiful, ‘Yes, sir.’ He didn’t have the luxury of time to examine the way father’s expression fell for a second at his drilled in response, too quick to notice entirely, too deep for a child his age to comprehend. Father had simply straightened up, tugged back the cuff of his sleeve that had moved out of place, and affirmed a stern, ‘Good,’ before walking away, knowing his son would follow close behind.

‘Where are we going?’ He had asked, once they were aboard a shuttle so big that Hux couldn’t stop staring, wondering in fear if it would ever tip over and crush everything beneath it. The interior was dark, its lights dimmed, the engine below him pulsating in a low hum, the cargo he was sat on vibrating with the ship ever so slightly.

Father had glanced up from his inspection of an extensive log on his data pad, looking the boy that was sitting on cargo that raised him to the height of his father’s shoulder, his red-blonde hair a mess, the freckles on his face unbecoming of the ruthless and efficient commander that his father knew he would grow up to be, eyes still full of childish wonder, heart still pure and uncorrupted. Brendol Hux looked at his son the way he had once looked at the galaxy, all-encompassing and inspiring and woefully, dreadfully innocent, and he sighed at thought of the Academy and the Cadets and the then defeated Galactic Empire.

‘Away,’ was his reply, chipped and on edge, and he ignored the crestfallen look on his son’s features in favor of going back to reading the collected logs of the tasks that awaited him when they docked.

 

It never rained on the planet of their new home – home, that’s what father had called it, but Hux didn’t see anything that reminded him of their old home, their real home, millions of light years away. Sometimes, he found himself missing it, from its sparsely decorated interior to its almost medical-like clean white walls, the soft linen of his bed, the toy blasters and tiny TIE interceptors that were made from cheap plastic, the faint taps of rain against the window, the lovely shade of strawberry-blonde of mother’s hair.

‘ _Hi sweetie, look what mommy got for you, that’s right, a little interceptor! Just like the ones daddy used to fly.’_ He had later found out that his father didn’t fly an interceptor so much as being the one who commanded and plotted their flights, but well, that had seemed almost insignificant in the face of his mother’s smile.

He missed her, the way she would laugh as she held him in her arms, the way she would kiss him on the forehead and showed him that he was her world, the way warmth flowed through her in the bitter chilly planet they had called home, a beacon of light in the darkness – a source of unwanted and diminished hope.

He cried, in his dorm room of the newly refurbished establishment of the Academy, ten years old and so awfully weak, unfit to be his father’s son, an utter disappointment, a boy who gave in to _feeling_.

He missed her, naught but a child without his mother, he missed her laugh and her smile and the way she had told him _I love you_. He didn’t understand – or perhaps he did, in a way, if he looked back on it and truly let himself see – why she had left, why she was forced to leave him behind, why she had never tried to communicate with him again.

He wondered if she missed him too, wherever she was, in whichever corner of the galaxy, far, far away, he wondered if she was thinking about him, about the kind of person her child would grow up to be, if she would be proud of him, if she would still laugh and smile and call him her son. He wondered about everything, through the nights when the Academy was silent, when the skies were dark and the air was still, his small beating heart wondered if she was even still alive.

 

Being the son of Commandant Brendol Hux of the (fallen, scattered) Galactic Empire had its perks, like having a dorm room all to himself, having the opportunity to follow father to various diplomatic meetings – when father’s schedule had allowed, when they were given time, because to father, the Empire, the Order had always come first – having a man of father’s caliber passing on his snippets of knowledge, it had greatly helped in his studies in the Academy, and for that he was grateful. But for all its perks came its disadvantages – the way the other kids would look at him, talk behind his back, how it was unfair, how he was being given special treatment just because of who his father was, the kids would pick on him, measly pranks and taunts and tease, and it disturbed him, even though he knew that it shouldn’t, even though he knew that he was better than that, than them, that he could control his emotions.

But pranks turned into fights and taunts turned into outright shouting matches, and Hux did not – yet – possess the composure that his father had slowly cultivated. He fought back, which landed him more often than not, in the medical bay, the droid working on his wounds as he sat, quiet, fuming, scared – scared of father’s reaction, scared of having made a mistake, of being called a failure. When it does inevitably happen, when father picked him up from the Academy – in an Upsilon-class command shuttle, all new and polished and _oh how the kids in class would talk about it_ – his eyes black-bruised and swollen and his knuckles scraped to hell, father would tell him that he needed more control, that he shouldn’t let anger drive him, that he should _destroy those that stand in your way and leave no room for their retaliation_.

He took those experiences like the lesson his father had meant for them to be, and he worked on it, his fighting techniques, his control over his own emotions, the ways to gain the upper hand in better strategic circumstances instead of lashing out and reacting to his circumstances, he learned and adapted and _responded_.

It wasn’t until he was sixteen that father told him about the Commandant’s Cadets, about how his dream of creating superior soldiers for the Empire had been realized, about how the First Order would do the same but _better_. His idea of having trained soldiers who were programmed from birth – Hux had asked if that was what father had been doing with him, and father didn’t even hide it, looked at him like he hadn’t even needed to bother to ask – who possessed the fearsome capabilities of his Commandant’s Cadets on the field and the loyalty that one needed to have for the Order, a whole army without the weaknesses of clone troopers, a whole army that was made to mercilessly execute orders without question.

‘Do you see this world that I am describing to you? Do you see the things we could achieve?’ And Hux did see, father’s ideals, father’s dreams – a chance for him to make it reality. He took it upon himself to work on it, like it was his own goal, his own dreams, those visions of the Order taking back control of the galaxy, he worked towards it and nothing else because he saw the power within it, the doors that it would open for him when he would finally have it – no longer the child that cried at night in the tempest rains, no longer the child that longed for the glow of his mother’s smile – no longer weak and frightened and absolutely, utterly, powerless.

 

He meets the boy who would change that two years down the road, at eighteen, he was already in the army, working its ranks, seeing its battles, he had trained and fought and _won,_ and in front of him stood this boy, just a few years younger than he was, but with eyes that had seemed so _old_.

‘Supreme Leader Snoke has asked for you to personally oversee the proceedings of Ren’s stay,’ a man in a billowing cloak spoke to his father, both their hairs gone grey and skin turned wrinkled, they were a stark contrast to the men (boys) that stood beside them.

‘And I assure you that he is in good hands,’ father replied, as they nodded to each other as if they were communicating through their eyes alone with words unspoken, the man in the cloak turned to leave, satisfied with the arrangement.

Father then turned his attention to the boy – a mop of raven black hair and endless pooling eyes – going through the trivial tasks of introduction, welcoming him to the Academy, and while the boy – _Ren_ , Hux thought, repeating the name in his mind as if to commit it to memory (a baseless act, for the boy’s presence shouldn’t _matter_ ) – though Ren was acknowledging and responding to father’s statements and questions, those eyes that looked like they had seen, could see _everything,_ were fixed solely on him.

‘I said, my son will show you around,’ his father gritted out, this time louder, and Hux became fully aware that his father had been talking indirectly to him and he snaps out of his daze - entranced, he didn’t understand _why_ – and he nodded to his father, ‘Yes, sir.’

Before he could even follow up with that, before he could even open his mouth to ask Ren to follow him, the boy spoke up in that condescending tone of his like he didn’t know who he was talking to – _the son of Commandant Brendol Hux, the one person who would lead the First Order to ultimate victory_ – like he didn’t even care, ‘No need, just bring me to my quarters.’

It irked him to no end, this child, this petulant, disrespectful _child_ – what made him so special anyway? What was his connection to the Supreme Leader? Why was he even on the base? It irked him to no end, and he couldn’t even pinpoint the reason, the way he felt like the boy could see through him, get under his skin, the way the boy looked at him with an indescribable _understanding_ in his old, ancient eyes – like the eye of a storm, of a freaking _hurricane_ , and Hux found it difficult to breathe like the way he found it difficult to dismiss Ren’s request (spoken like a command, being obeyed like it was one), and he felt like he was back on Arkanis again, all those years ago, cowering beneath his sheets in the face of a storm.


	2. KYLO

Ben Solo dreamed of a planet with two suns, one a light golden-yellow and the other a blistering orange-red, and it felt like reconciliation.  He sat through the sandstorm seen in his mind’s eye, quiet, contemplative – like how Luke had taught him, meditating, only, it was much easier compared to when he had been fully awake, sitting on the smoothed rock surface of the temple, the air around him cold and filled with a thrumming force of light. He sat through the sandstorm, dust and dirt brushing past his skin, his hair which was tied into a braid in the glowing hours of dawn was let down in his sleep, soft long locks of black cascading over his shoulder.

It shouldn’t have been so peaceful, sitting in the middle of a raging dust cloud – and, he supposed, it wouldn’t have been, not if it was happening to him for real, awake – but it was, the browns, oranges, and reds, the smell of parchment and sand and burning flames. ‘Kylo,’ a voice whispered, muttered, blowing with the wind, calling a name that wasn’t his, but a name he knew to respond to.

‘Grandfather?’ He answered, trembling, feeling the chill despite being in a desert which had fire for rain. Fear, insecurity, like a bolt struck straight into him, he sat paralyzed and wondered if this was the darkness that his uncle had warned him about. He felt small, in a world stretched endless, he looked around to see no one else with him, all alone.

‘Kylo,’ the voice called again, this time distorted, like it was being spoken by too many different voices all mushed together, speaking over each other, ‘Kylo.’

‘ _Ben_!’ He jumped, heart racing a thousand parsecs and hour and eyes blown wide, his breath coming in short uneven pants, knuckles white as snow from gripping too hard into the sheets. He awoke to the sight of his uncle looming over him, grabbing him harshly by the shoulders, shaking him back to consciousness. ‘It’s alright, Ben, you’re _safe_ ,’ Luke said, hushing him and trying to calm and slow his breathing.

He felt far from safe.

‘What happened?’ He asked, and he hated how his voice squeaked, a broken sound, pitching high in octave, ‘What was that?’ And he knew that his uncle saw what he was referring to, he knew that the Jedi Master understood – his fear, his insecurities, his utter _fascination_.

Luke chose not to answer, his expression worn and tired, like he had been by Ben’s side in the sandstorm, like he had felt that looming darkness. ‘I know you can resist the call of the dark,’ he said instead, his grey-white of his hair matching the color of carved rocks that formed Ben’s room, his mattress lined with the finest Cyrene silk, courtesy of his mother – who Ben absolutely doesn’t think about, not at all – perhaps in some form of an apology.

She knew that he didn’t want to go when she had sent him away, that he had wanted to stay, with her, with his father, with his uncle Chewie – and he did love Chewie too, his father’s dearest friend who held him with the softest embrace, almost as if he was afraid to hurt him, towering more than two meters tall compared to Ben’s tiny, tiny human size, Chewie had held him like he was the greatest of treasures. Like nothing else he had seen with his adventures with Han could even compare.

She had sent him away, and he didn’t understand. The look in her eyes like she couldn’t bear the pain, he didn’t understand why she was crying. Ben solo dreamed of a planet with two suns, and it scorched and seared everything else he had ever known.

 

Luke’s idea of training deferred from student to student, and while the rest of them at the temple got to practice with training sabers, Ben had to sit cross-legged, his eyes closed, right in the middle of the stone fortress. The roof was high above him, a dome-shaped structure, its ornate designs intricate. Sunlight streamed through from nooks and cracks, covering the interior with a blanket of gold, dust reflected off the beams, floating, almost like they were suspended in time, and Ben sat, quiet, surrounded by stone and light and the force that crackled through him.

‘Keep your calm, find your center,’ those were the words he had been left with, before Luke shut the large wooden double doors, closing out everything else from the outside world. Suspended in time. Like he was sitting in a bubble, hovering, a pool of infinite black around him. Thick, tangible, as if he could just reach out and take hold of a handful of oozing darkness, it was close to suffocating.

 _Find your center_. For the longest while, he had wondered if that _was_ his center – the trickling winds of not quite frost, the ground opening up like it was about to swallow him. Fear was second nature. For the briefest of moments, a whisper of insanity, he felt like he could harness it.

When Luke did allow him to train in technique, it was grueling, for him much so than the others. He was stuck on Ataru, form four of the seven forms of lightsaber combat, after bristling past Soresu – a form of resilience, deflection, Ben had realized that he could stop a blaster fire with just a plain connection to the force alone, and for the briefest of seconds, as the blaster shot (purposefully aimed to his side) floated in midair, Luke had looked painfully _afraid_ – Ataru left him panting, trying desperately to catch up with his breath as Luke asked him to strike again, and again, and again.

‘Feel the force flow through you. Move with it, let it guide you, embrace the idea that your weapon isn’t limited to the blade, but your whole body.’ It was easier said than done. Luke was putting more pressure on him than the other initiates for reasons that weren’t said, though Ben had suspected that his uncle was planning on choosing him as his apprentice. Luke had praised him greatly for his connection with the force after all, and while he was pleased with Luke’s confidence in him, it was in his meditations where the darkness reminded him that his abilities hadn’t come from the light.

But light was within him yet, as Luke had so liked to believe, and Ben dreamed of snow and forested lands, a stark contrast to the orange desert sands, the blanket of white-grey made him anxious. The trees framed a never-ending path, tall and lanky, their barks thick with age, Ben followed them, his footprints trailing behind him, the world was silent save for his breath that came out in a fog.

It scared him, when he went deeper and deeper in, the farthest of footprints covered by perpetually falling snow, he didn’t know where the trees were leading him, didn’t know if the walkway had actually ended, but the light called to him in murmurs, a soft and fleeting mutter, and eventually, inevitably, he stumbled upon it – a lightsaber of startling electric sky blue like that of a serene spring morning, no longer in the cold of winter, the morning dew fresh in the air, the gentle breeze caressing his face.

He never wakes to the concerned face of his uncle when those dreams sought him out, he only wakes to his own confusion.

 

‘Again,’ Luke said, his voice on the verge of commanding, and Ben did as he was told. He charged on an attack that Luke had easily deflected, and he felt the blade coming before he even saw it, managing to force push himself backwards to escape it. Barely. He stumbled backwards, gritting his teeth in exertion, and before Luke had the chance to anticipate his next move, he slashes again. Another block, another parry, he managed to get in two more swings before he felt the pain of Luke’s training saber smacking against his already bruised side.

‘Again,’ Luke repeated, for the hundredth time that day, and though the other students were sparring with each other around them, Ben heard not the clash of their blades. The long black curls of his hair had long fallen across his face, his skin tingled pink with effort, his mind had narrowed down to only one thing – attack, _destroy_.

The anger surged through him, fueling him, all the hits and wounds he had suffered burned in agony, and it raged through him in a furious storm, decimating, eradicating. A planet of dust and ashes and the molten core of two smoldering suns. Twisted, black, melted metal.

He didn’t realize that he was projecting until the red passed his mind and he could finally clearly see, the expression on Luke’s face like he was caught between a tortured memory and an indignant denial of a predicted future, the way Luke was looking at him like mother had – before she had sent him away, after father had stopped protesting – all Ben wanted to know was what he had done _wrong_.

When the voice he had gotten so accustomed to greeted him at night, in between the state of sleep and conscious meditation, he doesn’t flinch away from it like he used to, allowing it to settle in his mind, swirling, a mass of smoke in grey. ‘Kylo,’ the voice breathed, unaltered, harsh as gravel, as if it had been burnt.

‘Show me,’ he replied, quiet, bordering on fear but not quite, almost shaking, ‘please.’

And he does, appearing as a vision of half man and half metal, Ben’s breath hitched in his throat as the universe constricted around him, the atmosphere deadly thin. ‘Grandfather,’ he gasped like he had been drowning for a thousand years, ‘ _Darth Vader_.’

He saw Alderaan, how it had been before, with its golden spirals of towering architecture in a white sea of clouds, the open blue skies that were filled with shuttles, the stunning mountain ranges in the background, the planet that had been filled with people, with life. He saw Alderaan, and how it had been destroyed, in a ball of flames that had rained from skies not of blue, but of complete devastation. He saw Alderaan, or what was left of it, scattered to star dust, floating through the black void of space, its inhabitants long dead, its civilization annihilated.

He saw the device that did it, a weapon the size of the moon – a mass of black-grey metal eclipsing the sun, and he thought that he had never seen something so powerful, so terrifyingly beautiful.

‘Show me what I must do,’ he breathed, like it was a promise to be fulfilled.

 

‘Ben is gone,’ Leia cried, as she felt his presence fade into darkness, Luke had ended the call, face stoic, with a bare promise to bring back her son, but she knew better, in her nightmares and the shadows that surrounded her, she knew better than to shield herself from the truth of her own father, ‘Ben is gone.’

‘I’ll bring him back, we’ll bring him back. Me and Luke and Chewie. You’ll see, we’ll bring him back,’ an absolution, as Han kissed her on the palm her quivering hands, she had wanted so much to believe.

 

The shuttle was nothing special, though the look of it was eerily foreign, the people in it were what made Ben – _Kylo –_ nervous. They were clad in black, various forms of fabric and leather, a near awkward mismatch if not for how menacing they looked together, they had removed their masks in favor of showing him their true faces, a gesture of respect that Ben had no idea how to respond to, so he had sat, huddled up in his own corner, the cold air around him pulsating with the weight of the force.

He didn’t know how long they had traveled, dozing in and out of sleep, he was given food by the men aboard the ship and not much else. They were older than he was, perhaps in a few years, and they had reminded him so of the students in Luke’s temple. He felt the force within them, strong, turbulent, and he wondered if it was their fear that he had sensed in them or a projection of his own.

Before they had even docked, he felt a gaping hole open up underneath his feet, endless, it dropped into perpetual darkness. A relic lost to time. ‘Kylo,’ the words fluttered to him, tugging and pushing all at once, and the planet dissolved into a single point – a single being within it, so very old and ancient and forgotten.

It was nearly overwhelming, as he sought to burry himself deeper into the fabric of the oversized black cloak that one of the men had given him. The planet itself was far from its sun, its orbit long and tedious, floating in the farthest outreach, its skies were almost always night. The monument that greeted him as they tracked their way into its core stretched above him in size, looking as tall as it was wide, boundless, fading into the dusky twilight.

‘Kylo,’ he felt it again, vibrating, the bones grated within him to its rhythm, somber, like it was used to the tragedies of the galaxy, thrown out into the void of space, rushing through the doors of an airlock, ‘Come to me. Alone.’

The men that had escorted him stopped in their tracks, their footfalls hushed, their heads bowed, following an order. The halls in front of him continued on, its archways angular, man-made, faced with a grand doorway to the ends of the world, Ben had the universe to lose.

He walked, guarded on either side by glimmering obsidian, he urged to trace a finger along its walls to understand its history, but he knew better than to prod the sleeping unknown. As he neared the end, the halls opened up, a straight path that dropped hundreds of feet down to the core of the planet on each side, and right at its center stood a hooded figure, looking far too thin and frail for the incomparable force that Ben sensed resided within.

‘Kylo,’ the figure spoke, no longer through the connection of the force in their minds but through words, held up by sheer dominion, his voice bellowed though the structure’s surface, reverberating, echoing. ‘Kylo of the Knights of Ren, finally you have come to seek my guidance.’

And just like the vision that grandfather had shown him, the figure took off his hood to reveal a scarred face, pale with age and shaped with wisdom, Kylo – _Ben_ – kneeled.

‘ _Master._ ’

 

The crystal that he had acquired was rarer than any other, he had found it while scouring the Unknown Regions, his Knights with him, the oldest of them a man with greyed hair who bowed to him, a mere boy of fourteen. _Lord Ren_ , they had called him, exalted, and Kylo knew not if it was because of his bloodline or if it was because of his attunement with the force, but he had accepted it, reveled in it (like any other boy of fourteen would), and his confidence grew in waves.

The Supreme Leader – the master to his apprentice – had given him the daunting task of crafting his own saber, a practice of an old Order, a trail of initiation. He had felt the pull of the crystal like no other, as if it was calling to him and yelling his name, he felt its history, its rage, its power, and the pained crack on it screamed in ferocious bloodthirsty anger.

It had been too unstable to harness with the design of a single, simple blade, and Kylo had to wield in vents on the side to stop the crystal from surging towards its own destruction. The end product was a constant flickering red of lightning, the two shorter outlets on either side acted as a crossguard, the whole weapon an exquisite display of the crystal’s turmoil, a forced sense of a barely contained chaos. Kylo had never seen anything like it, much less held it, the way it crackled and shifted in his hands, the small sparking arcs of energy that would jump out and fizzle away, the heavy metal of the hilt surrounding the emitter, the core, the precious kyber crystal – Kylo loved most the glowering red as it showed him visions of a sea of blood and an infinite desert.

 

Snoke sends him to the base of the First Order to train with his newly forged weapon, providing him with the ultimate mission of eliminating every last Jedi, and Kylo squashed the thoughts of uncertainty at defeating Luke Skywalker. Snoke had promised to make him stronger, to train him better than Luke ever could, and those promises were backed by the words of grandfather’s prophecy of his rise to greatness in the Dark Side.

They had not appreciated his powers – father, mother, Luke – they had seen him for what he was and they had _feared_ his becoming, just like grandfather’s master had feared his, and Kylo was determined to prove to them, to prove to himself that he could achieve his vision – grandfather’s vision – of darkness overcoming the draw of the light.

Mother had not understood, so he would be the one to _show_ her. Unlimited, unrestrained power. He craved it, like nothing else he had ever wanted before. _Acceptance_. He had wanted her to see, the things that he saw, the things that he could accomplish – he had wanted her to see him for what he truly was.

The descendant of Anakin Skywalker, the descendant of Darth Vader.

Arriving on the base had him tense, while his Knights filtered through the crowd in familiarity of the location, he stood by the side of his oldest Knight – who was now clad in plain robes, mask left forgotten, Kylo was the one who would take his place – as the man accompanied him down the shuttle, they were welcomed by the Commandant and his son.

Kylo stood, silent, curious as they spoke, his eyes never leaving the boy (man, a whole head taller than he was and then some) with fiery red-brown hair that reminded him of a rippling sandstorm that came to him seemingly so long ago in a dream. His eyes were a mesmerizing blue-green, an exact match of his father’s, and behind them, Kylo saw a determined child threading in his father’s shadow, a man with something to prove, with something to lose. A wallowing depthless fear of not being good enough, of not being strong enough, an almost senseless drive that meant that failure was not an option, Kylo understood that, more than anyone, and it’s the sudden force of his own uncertainty that has him taken aback, reflected within those eyes the color of spring mirrored in the glass-like clarity of a river, Kylo saw himself for the first time since he had left the temple – a frightened young boy running from the past he had left behind.

The other doesn’t talk to him when they make their way to his assigned quarters, Kylo matching his pace as they strode side by side, almost silent save for the clinking of their boots against polished ground.

‘Hux,’ he said so suddenly that the other plainly stopped and stared, a look on his face as if Kylo had startled him out of a reverie.

‘W-What?’ Was the reply, and Kylo could tell that he was frustrated at himself for stuttering, and it would almost be endearing if he hadn’t followed it up with a scowl, ‘What is it, _Ren_?’ Like he was forcing himself to use Kylo’s name, like he was forcing himself to forget. Like he was speaking to an indignant child.

But Kylo (begrudgingly) ignored it in favor his piqued sense of interest as he asked, genuine, ‘Why do you dream of a planet in the rain?’ And Hux had looked at him in stunned silence for the longest of moments before dragging him up by the cloth of his cloak and slamming him hard against the metal of the Academy’s walls.

‘How did you know?’ Hux seethed, his knuckles white and his jaw clenched, and Kylo used the force to tap at the edge of the other’s mind because the answer was _obvious_ , but Hux reacted violently in response and Kylo didn’t comprehend. ‘Stay out of my head!’ He screamed, eyes wild and wonderfully uncontrolled, and it was then that Kylo realized that no matter how much of the force singed through the man’s veins, Hux was totally and completely _unaware_.


	3. HUX

The only force user he had ever met had been the Supreme Leader, and even then he had stood silent, by his father’s side, looking up at the hologram of the being that was said to be a master of the force, he had not fully known what the force had comprised of. It was difficult, he assumed, for something so intangible to be put into words, and the only thing he had gotten out of father was that it was a remarkable, formidable gift, and granted, he had been terribly jealous then, that the force had chosen others and not him – but after everything, going through his training in the Academy, graduating with honors, landing a role as a strategic advisor earned him a seat at the table of the General of the First Order – after all the deaths that he had witnessed, all the TIE fighters and X-Wings destroyed, the force had been the least of his concerns.

That was before Ren, still held in his grip and pressed tight against the wall, a stupid grin growing on Ren’s stupid face. ‘Stay out of my head,’ Hux had yelled, but he sensed Ren’s presence, fleeting, merely skimming past the edges, he knew that Ren saw the things he did, ghosting through his mind – a man standing on the edge, facing the tempest, the endless chill of winter, _the red heat of molten steel_ —

 _That_ was Ren projecting, a world consumed by flames, red and white and almost blinding, he felt it, everything, everything that Ren had wanted him to feel – the chaos, the anger, the fear, the childish delight in being able to harness it – Hux saw the remnants of a thousand worlds, scattered and torn to star dust. Like the collapse of a sun going supernova. The ultimate form of destruction.

And with it, the ultimate form of _creation –_ he could almost see his own future, a whispered destiny of ruling the galaxy, a whispered promise to bring the New Republic to its knees. He could almost see his own future, a shattering dominion, the glimmering white of uncountable stormtroopers, all his to command, Ren by his side. He could almost see his own future, but he chose not to accept it, not like this, not when Ren was so clearly _projecting_ , altering versions of the truth to suit his own needs, Hux thought it futile, an attempt at an unwarranted mind game that he did not, at all, want to participate in.

‘I’m not projecting,’ Ren said, still in his grip, though the smirk was wiped off in favor of a frown, his bottom lip jutting out slightly, annoyed, pouting, Hux barely held back a laugh. Foolish, immature, a mess of an enigma.

An unrelenting, seething violence. The tremors of a planet on the brink of implosion beneath his feet. ‘You’re telling me you can see the future, then?’ He quipped, snappish, this close to the other, Ren looked far less like that of a wise ancient being. The haunting steeliness in his eyes were gone, no longer looking at Hux like he could see right though him, they were instead replaced with a glowing want for understanding, and it was almost mesmerizing, a constant yearning, bright and full of life, burning like the solar flares of an orange-red sun.

Burning. Like the anger of crackling lightning.

His mind registered the pain before it could wrap around what actually happened, and he blinked, dazed, as he fell bottom first onto the ground, his head smacking against the wall behind him, he groaned as he felt the coldness of metal pressed against his skin. As he managed to will his eyes into focus, ruefully still seeing double, the expression on Ren’s face was unreadable – conflicted, Hux couldn’t tell if the boy was furious or remorseful. Perhaps a mixture of both. He scowled, ‘What is wrong with—’

‘I don’t need your understanding,’ Ren said, like it was awfully obvious, like it somehow justified his outburst. Hux wanted to punch the ever-living shit out of Ren’s absolutely _stupid_ face.

Years ago, in zero-gravity training, father had told him that space was, in all aspects, a spherical container. That all the planets and the stars were just floating around in it, that no matter where the sphere rolled, no matter how turned around the planets were, that there were no set pieces – that ups and downs, lefts and rights, none of that mattered.

Perception – that was how father had put it – meant that people believed what they wanted to believe, that the truth collapses in communication. Perception, like the lack of gravity in the blackness of space, had no set pieces.

He wondered if the contrast in both his and Ren’s perception of what was the truth had clashed together, the contrasts in the way they had lived, contrasts in the way they were living – he wondered if Ren understood it himself – the way the force worked, the way the energy sparks in his mind and fuels his whole body, the way it singed like a static-filled love song, the way it taunts and tempts and deceives – he wondered if Ren understood his own projections, his own visions, he wondered if they were naught but truth collapsing in communication.

Perhaps. Not. Ren was too uncontrolled, too undisciplined within himself to see the strength of his own powers. Powers that the Supreme Leader had so treasured. His temper flared but for a passing moment, the thought of how different it would all have been, his entire life up to this very moment, the differences it would have made if he had only been given the chance to have a taste—

Mother would not have left, if he had only just _tried_ , if he had only just been strong enough, instead of hiding behind in the darkness, left to be forgotten, if he had only just had the ability to make her stay, to protect her, to protect them, all of them, mother, father, the entire Empire – if only he had possessed a fraction of what Ren did, how much of a difference he would have made, instead of just wasting it all away – like an untrained, uncontrolled _child_.

‘You don’t know me!’ Ren screamed, the fury in those eyes sending a rush of heat through him, an almost panicked reaction that he quickly snuffed out, and he tries to swallow a large intake of air when it felt like he was suffocating. He clawed at his throat, Ren’s invisible grip teetering on the edge of worrying, and it was in that moment, suspended in time, where it hurt just trying to breathe, that Hux saw the desperate struggle of tears in those beautiful, depthless eyes, the power behind it roaring, singing. A static-filled love song.

A hatred brewing.

When the dizziness reached its peak, he gasped, loud and strained, choking, coughing, he collapses face first onto the ground only to catch himself at the last moment, palms planted firm on either side of his head, panting, burning with effort. It shouldn’t have been funny, but he laughed anyway, a near desperate sound, his throat raw as he spoke, his voice cracking, ‘And you think you know me?’

He shoved himself up, being taller than the other standing, he forces himself into Ren’s space as he snarled, spat, the words like vile venom on his tongue, ‘Just because these _powers_ let you see into my head, you think you understand everything? You think you’re better than me?’

No, Ren had never thought that, not until Hux had put it so eloquently into words for him. The beginning of the end, he scoffed, when Ren’s child-like perception of the galaxy served him no longer. Ren would learn in time, he supposed, and perhaps then, Ren would truly be _better_ than him, but right now, right now he was _nothing_ – ‘What use is it in learning to control the force when you can’t even control yourself?’

He leaves Ren stunned, caught between an outrage and the will to prove him wrong.

 

He doesn’t see Ren for months after that, sent away on an outfield mission, their tiff in the Academy’s hallways was the farthest thing from his mind. The mission had been rough, a team of Resistance fighters hiding in the outskirts, their base camp well-fortified like they had been there for ages, Hux had wondered how they managed to accomplish it undetected.

At the sacrifice of many lives, they had somehow succeeded in defeating the rebels before they could send out a distress beacon, eliminating the risk of encountering back up, his plan to get the troops home at the end of it all was still hailed as a success despite their losses. When they touched down back at base – father hadn’t been there to welcome him home (not like he had expected anything else) – hindsight had Hux thinking that it would have been a much simpler mission had Ren been there with him.

_The glimmering white of uncountable stormtroopers._

He slinked away as the crowd cheered and the rest of his unit celebrated, his footsteps undecided and his mind filled with wording his latest report log,  it comes as a surprise when he found himself walking past an open training room, Ren sitting right by the door way, back slumped, stopping the doors from closing.

He could tell it was Ren even as the boy’s black curls obscured his face – even in Ren’s visions, he saw right past the mask, past all those layers of fabric – fabric that the Ren before him had sorely lacked, topless, he looked frail and way too thin, the black pants of his gi clung loose on his hips. He could tell it was Ren by the way the air around him started thundering, constricting, and he resisted the urge to tug open the very topmost button of his uniform collar, a phantom grip squeezing his throat.

‘Ren,’ he called, this time, the other was the one who snapped his gaze up, startled, and Hux chalked it up as a revenge fulfilled. Ren was bleeding, a large gash on his chest and several smaller burns on scattered across his skin, and Hux silences the words bubbling up that sounded too much like concern.

‘You should go to the medbay,’ he said instead, and the way Ren scoffed and rolled his eyes annoyed him more than it should. Control, he reminded himself, was something that he possessed and Ren didn’t. Injuries were a mere form of punishment of one’s mistakes – and no matter what he thought of the other, Ren was more than capable of learning from his own misgivings. It was none of his concern.

 

It should have been none of his concern, but a few days later, he bumped into Ren, this time in the hallway connecting the cafeteria to the training rooms, bleeding once again, a nasty looking green-blue bruise on his nose. Ren was fumbling with the cloth of his cloak, using it in an attempt to stop the blood from dribbling down his obviously broken nose, failing miserably, he manages only to smear it further across the bottom half of his face.

A few steps to the right of him, unconscious on the cool tiled floor, was the body of an Academy student. Dead or merely knocked out, Hux hadn’t quite wanted to prod.

‘You should go to the medbay,’ he said again, this time, he doesn’t quite manage to hide the slight worry that tinged his voice. The rumbling of air around them felt restless, an uncertain murmur of a shiver. Ren looked downright murderous.

‘He came out of nowhere,’ Ren replied to an unasked question, as if Hux had demanded some sort of explanation as to why Ren had let someone as insignificant as a kid from the Academy deck him across the face, ‘I didn’t do anything.’

Hux believed him, not because he thought Ren wouldn’t have provoked such an attack (quite the opposite, really), but because he knew of the disdain that the Academy students held towards Ren and his Knights. It wasn’t like Ren was exactly subtle about his force powers. Or that lightsaber that dangled from his hip, held on by a leather strap, Hux had never seen Ren use it, at least, not when he was walking down the hallways of the base, and he quite wanted to keep it that way.

‘Your nose is broken,’ an obvious statement, Ren should know better than him the extent of the damage, but he tried to coax Ren into having it examined and properly healed anyway, ‘Come on, the medical droid is more than capable of fixing it.’

‘It’ll heal on its own,’ Ren’s voice started getting nasally, and he let out a sick gurgling nose as he spun around and coughed, blood splattering all over the hallway’s pristine white surface. Hux was inwardly glad that Ren had not chosen to spew blood all over his face, considering.

It doesn’t make their conversation any less infuriating. Hux knew the type – usually reckless jarheads that figured going to the medical bay was some sort of weakness, the kind that boasted about their battle scars, the kind that believed that they were somehow invincible – moronic, asinine cannon fodder. But Ren, Ren was just downright _stubborn_.

‘It won’t heal right,’ he argued, with absolutely no idea why he even cared in the first place, wanting to stand his ground more than anything, he briefly wondered how it was possible for Ren to so easily get under his skin. A mere semblance of self-control. If he didn’t have that over Ren, what else did he have?

‘No,’ Ren replied stiffly, the tone of his voice chipped in a manner that suggested that the conversation was entirely over, but Hux wasn’t about to back down, especially when he knew that he was _right_.

In the form of perception, or truth? It didn’t matter.

He sighed, gritting his teeth, this close to dragging Ren to the medbay, willing or not, but Ren seemed to pick up on that – and of course, of course Ren was shifting through his thoughts – as he uses the force to hold Hux in place, the movement an exertion on its own, and his breaths grew into heavy exhales.

Ren had been training before the entire incident, it seemed, and Hux caught sight of the way Ren held himself up – like he was still gravely injured beneath his cloak, like the huge gash across his chest hadn’t yet started to heal – the plain worry that emitted off him was enough to make Ren relinquish the hold of the force on him, and he quickly took the few steps to minimize the distance between them, steadying the Knight as he swayed unbalanced.

‘Ren,’ he pleaded, not liking the way Ren’s eyelids fluttered, like he was trying desperately to see straight, to get his world back into focus. ‘ _Kylo_ ,’ he frowned, as he used the back of his sleeve to wipe off the blood on Ren’s face, the warmth of it seeping through fabric, not liking the way he cared, like Ren’s wellbeing was somehow his responsibility.

‘I’m fine,’ Ren growled, looking all but fine as he uses all his energy to force push Hux away. They both stumble, Ren steadying himself against the walls, and Hux saw fire raining from the heavens and a multitude of exploding star dust against the backdrop of a clear white sky.

 

Ren avoided him after, and Hux figured it was for the best. They both had their own duties to tend to, instead of revisiting whatever the hell that was that had transpired between them. Hux always just barely misses him, be it in the training rooms or the mass hall or even just walking past each other in the hallways – something about the way the residue waves of a suffocating unsettled itch lingers in the air, the ever present vehement sense of determination, Hux wondered if it was the force that was drawing him to the other, like a planet being pulled around the gravity of a dying sun. A massive supernova.

It doesn’t take long for him to grow tired of it, of following behind Ren’s shadow – like a lap dog, like Ren was so many notches above him – and he buries himself in his work so that he could forget. What he felt for the other wasn’t quite hatred, but it was pretty damn close.

Father’s reallocation aboard a ship gave him the distraction that he had wanted, taking over most of the roles that father had left behind meant that he saw less of the battlefield and more of countless paperwork. He takes over the stormtrooper program that his father had started too, already implemented, it was still in its infancy stage and it required his attention more than anything else. He doesn’t miss the way the other officers overseeing the program glare at him like he was scum – believing that he had merely inherited control over it instead of getting it through merit, and while it was true that he was given charge of the program because he was Brendol Hux’s son, the fact that it meant that he was the most knowledgeable in its field was undeniable.

Perception, or truth? Hux thought that both of it were feeble attempts at justification.

‘Sir,’ Phasma greeted him, saluting, her regulation cut blonde hair neatly sleeked back, white stormtrooper helmet tucked under her arm. She was tall, taller than he was, slightly, and though the other officers hated the fact that they had to look up at her to command her around, Hux hadn’t let that bother him one bit. An over reliance of a continuously stroked ego was a huge downfall, after all, and father had taught him to be wiser than that.

‘Lieutenant,’ a nod, as he unfolded his arms in a gesture to seem more approachable, standing two floors up in the command room as a bunch of trooper recruits trained below gave everyone involved a sense of overt strictness when talking to him, not that he didn’t appreciate their sentiments, but sometimes, it was better to get to know the men and women serving alongside, ‘at ease.’

She smiled, barely, more of a slight twinkle in her eyes than an actual upturn of lips, and there was pride in her voice when she continued, ‘Sir, the newly implemented regime has shown very positive results in the first week. I would like to personally thank you, sir, on behalf of my platoon, for taking our concerns into consideration.’

To call it weird that someone was thanking him for what father had deemed as an _indoctrination_ was putting it lightly. He responded with practiced tact, dismissing the trooper who wasn’t quite far off from his own age – she was taken from her parents at birth, that much he knew, a couple of miners off an asteroid belt, too poor to raise a kid who was conceived unplanned, perhaps it was more of a favor to Phasma than to her parents that the Order had taken her in.

In any case, she had proved herself loyal and more than capable. Her track records aside – proficient with a blaster, impeccable at hand to hand combat – she was rational, strict when she needed to be, Hux liked working with her, a soldier that could demonstrate her worth.

It was more than could be said with Ren, who he found at the observatory, long after the night cycle had started, the distant planets glimmering in the sky in a sea of uncharted galaxies. It was a place he frequented, open to the soft chill of the night, it was somewhere he could be, just by himself, quiet, a place to collect his mind.

It was a place he frequented, but he had never seen Ren there before, sitting cross legged on the floor, eyes closed, head angled backwards a small degree. He wondered if Ren knew of his fondness for this location, if Ren had sat, meditating, waiting for him to show up for hours. Ren turned towards him before he could make a sound, and the way the light of the twilight sky danced across his skin, it covered Ren’s face in an off-white moonbeam, the angles all wrong and awfully ethereal.

‘I see her,’ Ren starts, and Hux had wanted to interrupt in confusion, but Ren pressed on, ‘at the back of your mind, sometimes, she comes to the forefront of your dreams—’

‘Mother,’ Hux said, meant as a question but it came out sounding more like a confirmation, and Ren nods, slowly, as if any sudden movement would break the moment, as if Ren and him had a sort of invisible connection holding them together. ‘You miss her,’ Ren stated, and Hux figured that denial would have been pointless.

‘You dream of her, and the planet in perpetual rain. Where I came from, the rain was quite different from yours,’ and Hux wants to ask him what this was all about, if he should be offended that Ren had trespassed into the realm of his dreams, if he should be angry at himself for not noticing the Knight’s presense, if, if – but then the night skies opened up to a beautiful blue, dusted in rose and lilacs, the rain a whispered caress, a light drizzle, the smell of morning dew like the succulent honey of spring.

‘How do you do it?’ Ren asked, and Hux had to blink away the residue of an eternal sunshine across a wide pastel sky. ‘How do you stop yourself from missing her?’

He swallowed, hoarse, all too exposed with nowhere to hide, and he murmured a faint, ‘I don’t.’

Ren doesn’t answer, not for the longest time, and they stayed, hanging on a single thread of spacetime, just a tilt off from being over the edge. A chemical reaction away from going supernova. The difference between a civilization and star dust floating in nothingness.

Ren gets up all too abruptly, eyes downcast, his long raven black hair like a pool of flowing ink, Hux resists the urge to tuck the strands over Ren’s ears. ‘I’m leaving,’ Ren said at last, still not looking at him, still closed off and wretchedly silent, and it was the stark contrast that had Hux worried, a simple reaction, years of enforced control forgotten.

‘What?’ He asked, desperately wanting to understand, but the Knight strode past him without a single glance, his stance all too wound up and deeply troubled.

‘I’m leaving,’ Ren repeated, standing shoulder to shoulder, barely inches away, they had never been further apart. ‘I’m leaving and there’s a chance I’m not coming back.’

 _Where?_ He had wanted to ask. _Don’t_. He had wanted to say. _Stay._ He had wanted to beg, but _good_ was what he muttered under his breath. Ren tensed up at that, and Hux had fully expected a punch to the face or the force around his neck, but Ren does nothing, fists balled and jaws clenched, Ren merely walks away.

That night, he dreamed of a world crumbling, burning with sky high flames.


End file.
